Cryptex is well learned for being an 18 year kid bursting onto the Glitch Hop scene. His new release, Isolated Incidents, out today on Austin-based Gravitas Recordings is sure to push some speakers to their bass limits! Cryptex has educated himself well, and the production quality speaks for itself. The clean bottom end is complimented with an onslaught of lasers attacking from every direction. Isolated Incidents sound has roots in solid Hip Hop beats, but Cryptex has taken that flavor and created something much more out of this world. Even with all the comparisons to Glitch Mob, Samples, and Crystal Method, this sound is still fresh.

ill-esha’s forthcoming release, Circadian Rhythms, is available on Addictech November 20th for pre-release and everywhere else December 20th! There isn’t a doubt in my mind that ill-esha is the Queen of Glitch Hop! Although all her music might not be considered glitch-hop she is one of the main players in the community. She helps run and a mod for the Glitch Hop Forum. She’s a vetern when it comes to underground sounds with over a ten years of releasing music as a vocalist & producer. She’s been on labels such as Breakbeat Science, BluSaphir, Muti Music and Haunted Audio. She is no stranger to the game and has been banging out tunes in all various styles from Drum and Bass to Glitch.

Out of all the people I’ve met in 2010 she has to be the most positive person out of everyone. She has a huge smile and unbelievable heart. It was a pleasure to have her come out for my 25th birthday party and play an amazing set in my living room. I will never forget my quarter century mark thanks to her and the awesome time I had with her.

This release is just another moment for people to acknowledge a leading star in the community. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that she will only grow into a more recognized face of this era of music. She’s recently relocated from Canada to the Bay area so be sure to jump on the chance to see her live where she hypnotizes the world with her voice and sullen beats.

If in the Bay area check out the Record Release Party on 11/20. It will be held at Public Works and includes performances by: ill-esha, Mochipet, Glitchy and Scratch, B Bravo, Joe Mousepad, and The Slayers Club.

I can’t wait to see her next and give her a big hug because this work is a complete masterpiece! Pick up a FREE remix of one of her latest tunes and check out the preview clips of the upcoming release. It will be out with a special edition thumbdrive version with video and other goodies!

Kraddy (Alpha Pup, Muti)
“She’s got some great production and is one of the few women I know of making beats!”

Shilo Urban (Dancefever5000)
” ill-esha is one of my favorite producers, DJs and vocalists out there. Her recent mix blew the hinges off my mind & pissed off my neighbors.. holding down the far Pacific Northwest with mountains of bass and a forest of talent”

Ben Samples (Daly City, Muti, Fresh2Death, Denver Bass Squad)
” ill-esha’s music just does it for me, she combines the raw power of bass with the sweatiness and sexiness of beautiful melodic leads to make the whole package in dubstep and glitch… and she’s the sexiest producer that isn’t Ben Samples.”

This week we have a SPECIAL afromonk.com exclusive Fire Friday Mix from none other than Kraddy! This man is about to blow some minds. His new Labyrinth EP is due out next week. This release is just what you’re hoping for I believe from him. I’ve been in contact with him for awhile now and he truly one person who is extremely passionate about music and not just the music he makes. His background in music is so vast compared to what you’d think.

I can’t thank him enough for this mix. It’s jam packed with some of the biggest tunes right now. This is just a small glimpse into what he’s been jamming out too. It’s always great to see producers step into a DJ mode selecting tunes besides all original sets.

Hope you enjoy! This will be the first episode of AfroMonk.com special guest mixes. If you are interested in putting a mix together for this series please contact us!

Kraddy’s new Labyrinth will take you on one long epic journey. The opening track sets the mood and preps you for what is ahead as you enter the maze of energy. No Comply pushes you right into the deep. Banging beats flood your ears and you can’t help but sway and feel every hit. Your heart rate can’t help but sync up with the kicks as you feel the bass push against your chest. This 6min tune is a sneak peak into whats in store. Let Go fires off with a mash of thumping beats and fluent vocals, a true glitch-hop banger. The railings are gone and fall into these mesmerizing sound waves. The synths send chills as they slide in and out of the background. That signature Kraddy crunk attack is shown off in this hit. Forget about The Glitch Mob, the original slaymaker is who you should fear as he takes the stage. Kraddy has stayed true to his fresh hype sound with a deep new take. Into The Labyrinth has to be my favorite tune off this EP without a doubt. The first time I heard it I put my headphones on and laid in bed. This tune erupted through the masterfully sexy intro. It drops and it’s as if you’ve been taken into a new dimension of sound. Piercingly tantalizing vox cuts in and you can’t help but get goose bumps as you imagine you’ve reach the climax of the journey. It pitches down for a second as a train flys by you to let you take a breath and takes you right back in. You feel the waves pulling you away as you want more. Minotaur steps in and goes in for the kill. At this point you feel as if in daze. Different sounds shift and you find yourself wondering if what you hear is a new path entirely or just another climax. It picks you back up for another thrill ride as you near the final pass. A piano cuts in and leads you out.

This Friday I figure make it special since I missed a post this week. TONS and TONS of mixes keep flooding out to us all! It was impossible to pick just one. I’ve comprised a post of three mixes. There are more to come in the next week so hold on. I’m proud to host this Friday three huge mixes at the current moment. Sub Swara is back again with a bigger taste of what is to come from the Triggers album. Love and Light give a small mini preview of the upcoming release. Kraddy prepares a monster mix for Halloween for us all the rage too. Just be sure to check out my Fall 2010 Promo Mix k?! =P

Kraddy is BACK with full force! Today we get a small tease of his upcoming release Labyrinth. This EP is going to smash some crowds. I’ve heard bits and pieces of it and wow serious bass is coming your way. No Comply will be filling the dancefloors everywhere you go so get ready and be sure to download this tune. Kraddy will most likely be heading to a city near you while he tags along some dates with Ana Sia. The last time I saw him was at Lightning in a Bottle and this guy is no stranger to a party. He’ll have probably at least 5 girls dancing up on stage with him as he slays the masses. Kraddy thank you sir for all you have done to help bring the glitch and bass. Jesus why hasn’t anyone used that… Glitch & Bass. (runs and registers the domain).

Be sure to be on the look out for the Labyrinth EP due out November 9th on Alpha Pup and the epic album release party at the greatest weekly on Earth, Low End Theory!

There has been a great influx of fantastic music going around. A few of my producer friends that I’m contact with have put out some banging tunes together in the recent weeks. I figure I put this together instead of posting a Fire Friday Mix!

I wanted to share with you all some of the music I’ve been jamming out too. As time progresses it seems like more and more are jumping into this whole bassy glitch scene and at the sametime the producers who have been around keep getting better.

This officially makes the 200th post for AfroMonk.com! I can’t believe it. It seems like it wasn’t long ago that I started this site.

I want to thank everyone who has ever been to my site and checked out any post. I want to give a MAJOR THANK YOU to all the producers out there that have actually answered my messages and e-mails. All of the people who send me their unreleased music and keep me up to date with all the latest tracks. If it wasn’t for you guys there wouldn’t be anything to write about. Keep doing what you love and making that sweet music.

It has been less than a year that Afromonk.com has gone live and it’s become one of the best projects I’ve ever done. I’m glad to have PBJ on board and have him part of the team. I plan to expand this site more in the near future and do a complete re-design. The next major project I’ll be embarking on is becoming a producer and starting a label. Lots of big news will come out of this week-end in Vegas.

I want to make a list of all the people who have helped me with this site. The ones who I love to help out and share their music with you. They’ve done nothing but hooked it up and be a friend and not just some other person online.

No particular order but this post is for you guys that I’ve met online!

Kraddy put out a new mix out and man it’s banging. Hand selected banging tunes put together for a nice journey through bass. Kraddy has some serious momentum going on. His upcoming mash up album is highly anticipated coming out of the Alpha Pup label and his recent track Bomb Anthem is blowing up dance floors. Keep your eye out on him because he’s about to slay the world.

I’ll be honest I don’t think there is a correct answer to this question nor is there for any genre of music. At the end of the day music is music despite the label or genre. There have been many names for “Glitch Hop” such as lazer bass, crunk bass, etc… The question you probably want to know is what defines a track as glitch hop.

The beauty of Glitch Hop is that it’s not really a genre with specific rules or BPM. I like to consider Glitch Hop the type of music that incorporates glitchy effects like beat repeaters and sweeps. The tempo of the music doesn’t really matter at all. The genre of Glitch is where it falls into because of this. When Hip-Hop/Crunk samples are added with all these effects the result is… Glitch Hop! Yup that’s basically it.

Glitch Hop has really started to take off within the past year or two. The Glitch Hop Forum has appeared and helps unite the community of fans, producers, and Djs. Glitch.fm was started and specializes in this sound. Acts like Pretty Lights and The Glitch Mob are headlining festivals all around the world.

I don’t think it has been documented where the term was actually phrased but it most likely has ties to Prefuse 73, Dabrye, Funkstorung, or edIT. Glitch and IDM had been around a good while before Glitch Hop started to appear. It was around 2001 where the sound really started to take shape with the early works of Prefuse 73 on Warp Records. 2004 was when things really took off when Conartist turned into edIT and released Crying Over Pros For No Reason.

Another thing that is worth mentioning about Glitch Hop is that it’s for the most part it’s played Live. This means that most people who play this music use controllers and actually manipulate and create these sounds on the fly. Essentially technology has allowed us to use all sorts of fun toys to create these live glitch remixes. There are many producers and DJs who actually create songs as they play with extended amounts of loops they’ve created before hand. There’s more of a performance element when it comes to glitch hop.

I’ve asked some people who play a major role directly or indirectly with the sound of Glitch / Glitch Hop what they thought Glitch Hop is. These are direct replies when I asked them “What is Glitch Hop”

“It’s bigger than just a music genre it’s an artform, yourself as the beat maker is turning digital sound techniques such as clicks / bleeps / bit crush reduction and many more methods into music.”

- Mussck

(Pioneer in the Glitch sound)

“To me Glitch Hop is just another term for the latest form of evolved hip hop. Glitch Hop seems to be regionalized to the west coast of North America, and it is also quite popular in Australia. Other geographical locations have their own take on the sound. In England & LA they call it Wonky, In Scandinavia they call it Skweee, etc. Really it’s all just music, by labeling it we make it more accessible to those who don’t know about it. If a new artist emerges with a new sound that doesn’t quite fit in any existing (sub) genre, a journalist will come up with a name for it in their attempt to describe it. This is the same way the term Glitch Hop came about, as well as most genre titles from Rock to Dubstep.”

- Dewey Db

(Founder of Glitch Hop Forum)

“Glitch hop get its roots from hip hop, obviously looking at its name. It’s a kid or a man- not a rap star or his ego- doing whatever the fuck they want with a what-would-be hip-hop beat. It’s taking the swagger of a rap beat and glitching / stuttering / repeating the shit out of it in an intelligent OR unintelligent way. It’s taking hiphop vocals and mashing them through a blender. It’s NOT tailoring a specific beat for kanye or jayZ, rather to embrace a dancefloor, impress your friends, or just for your own 2010 glitchy satisfaction. And oh yeah, it’s also about the bass. :)”

- Freddy Todd

(Up and coming Glitch Hop Producer)

“‘glitch hop’ seems to be the most common name for a genre of music which involves electronic production, loud synthetic bass, a hiphop/crunk feel and often (but not necessarily) includes edgy music production techniques which are normally heard in IDM.

although predominantly heard at festivals and underground parties on the west coast of North America it has been gaining popularity in Europe, Australia and Asia lately.”

- ill gates

(Master Glitch Hop Producer)

“Glitch is taking what most people would consider an error or a mistake and working it into something great sounding. Like distortion is to an electric guitar, glitch is to electronic production.”

- Kraddy

(Master Glitch Hop Producer / Former member of The Glitch Mob)

“In a very narrow sense, the term “glitch-hop” could be interpreted as ‘mid-tempo, twisted hip-hop beat with distorted, heavy bass and acapellas’, but I rather see it as a tentative name which somehow stuck and is now wide-spread (relatively at least). It is rather directed outwards to encompass various music styles sometimes also referred to as: acquacrunk, turbo crunk, lazer bass, future blap, future beatz, street bass, heavy bass, wonky, hyphy, usually falling within the broader categories of IDM, EDM and recently, quite often flirting with dubstep”

- Docktor Krank

(Runs highly respected Glitch Hop Blog)

“Glitch-Hop is like Hip Hop stuck into a blender whipped and then poured over layers of Bass lasagna and topped with a good heaping of Rave Synth Sauce and some 8-bit samples of Chucky Cheese Parmesan”

- Mochipet

(Producer / Founder of Daly City Records)

“Glitch hop is hip hop based IDM, music heavy with bass and rich in provocative melodic contortions, chopped up samples and artfully designed combinations of ancient drum beats and futuristic sounds. Largely rejecting traditional instrumentation for erroneously produced noises not found in nature, glitch hop is the brash back-talking ethos of HELL YES, I’m pushing buttons- and look what it does to my dance floor. It is the musical representation of the post-modern void of a world in which we live that could end any second with the press of another kind of button. Glitch hop symbolizes the failure of technology and the debunking of the myth of progress. Progress will not save us- but dancing just might.”

- Shilo

(Runs one of the most well known Glitch Hop/West Coast blogs on the web)

“I think glitch-hop in the most basic sense is just a geeky take on hip hop… splash some slowed down IDM patterns on some bass and add some weird sounds that someone might bob their head to and you’ve pretty much there.”

“I think Glitch-Hop is definitely more than just “bass” music by the very fact that it’s prefaced by the term “Glitch.” To me this genre has taken influence from a sort of “Glitch Design Philosphy,” which I interpret to be the act of exploiting any technology available for artistic gain; usually in ways different from the intended use of a particular technology being used. By virtue of the fact that this genre is explicitly influenced by Hip-Hop music, it is then only natural that it is also bass music.

For example, today I was browsing some tutorials from Tom Cosm that one of our bloggers, Binary Ally, had posted about how to make really fast rhythmically-sequenced pseudo-random fx automations. Even though Tom was accomplishing this through Ableton, I would say the techniques he used were clearly hacks in the sense that he exploited several routing/chaining features in a highly inventive way. He didn’t just go in and automate everything by hand, which would have probably taken on the order of days to accomplish, but instead accomplished this similar effect on the order of minutes. It’s truly boundary pushing stuff.”